Where does Giorgio Agamben stand regarding the ‘deconstructive turn’ in Western philosophy? As Continental philosophy buffs probably already know, 20th century Western philosophy made two abrupt right turns (or maybe two left turns?) in the disorderly crash-course of the previous century: a ‘linguistic turn,’ executed, for example, by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and a ‘deconstructive turn,’ performed by Martin Heidegger’s “Overcoming Metaphysics,” and followed by, inter alia, Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology. And, taken together, these two right/left turns mark a 180-degree reversal in the direction of Western philosophy: from the syncretizing efforts of, for example, G.W.F. Hegel’s metaphysical system, to the deconstructive work of Derrida’s ‘de(con)struction of Western metaphysics.’
“Experimentum Vocis,” the first essay in Agamben’s What Is Philosophy? clearly follows the sign-posts signalled by the linguistic turn, since this essay explores the question of the place of speech, voice, grammar, and language in Aristotle’s Metaphysics. But whether Agamben also follows the deconstructive turn of Derrida’s Of Grammatology in challenging the privilege given to phonocentric speech in Western metaphysics is more questionable, since Agamben basically accepts the metaphysical proposition that Western philosophy is predicated upon the strict parallelism between ontology and logic, being and thinking, or being and language, described in Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Categories. Agamben also believes that ‘being gives itself’ directly in the privileged language of Western metaphysics: a proposition deconstructionists question, arguing that there is no direct connection, in Émile Benveniste’s terms, between the semiotic (syntactic structure) and the semantic (the meaning of words), or, in Ferdinand de Saussure’s terms, between signifier, signified, and referent, and that what ‘gives itself’ in language is simply the differential structure of signification itself (Derrida’s differance), since language is predicated upon the difference between signifiers, and not their significant reference to ideas or things.
Western metaphysics, by contrast, Derrida argues, is predicated upon a Greek myth of the proximity of voice (phone) and reason (logos) within the spirit or soul (psyche) of the human being (anthropos), and the inscription of phone and logos in the scriptural letters (grammatta) of phonocentric speech, which transparently refers to the ‘being of things.’ In Aristotle’s Metaphysics, anthropogenesis is equated with the imposition of rational logic (logos) upon the animal voice (phone), which converts the ‘biological animal’ (zoon) into the ‘biological animal equipped with rational speech’ (zoon logon ekhon): the Greek citizen of the polis or the Western metaphysical subject. This privileging of phonocentric speech then accounts, in Aristotle’s thinking, for the superiority of rational human beings over subhuman animals, and of Greek speakers over other human beings (‘barbarians’). The privileging of phonocentric speech in Western metaphysics is dubbed, by Derrida, ‘phonocentrism,’ ‘logocentrism,’ ‘anthropocentrism,’ or ‘Eurocentrism’; and the deconstruction of Western metaphysics is largely devoted to dislodging phonocentric speech from its privileged place in the canonical texts of Western metaphysics, and replacing phonocentric logic with the science of grammatology, which considers all scriptural texts (including hieroglyphs, graffiti, tattoos, and forest paths) as examples of an unrestricted writing (ecriture) characteristic of all human beings: Westerners and non-Westerners, Greeks and non-Greeks, Continental philosophers and Anglo-American barbarians alike.
In “Experimentum Vocis,” then, Agamben attempts to salvage Western metaphysics by arguing that Aristotle anticipates this deconstructive critique, citing his argument that what distinguishes rational speech (logos) from the animal voice (phone) is the inscription of phonographic letters (grammatta) within the spirit or soul of the biological human being, thereby crediting Aristotle with inventing grammatology avant la lettre. The crucial question, however, is whether Agamben accepts this quintessentially metaphysical concept, or whether he criticizes this curious notion of Western metaphysics. But Agamben also argues that the distinction between animal cries and rational human speech arises from the self-conscious exteriorization of expressive speech as scriptural language, thereby converting scriptural language into a prosthetic extension of extrasomatic human evolution and dislodging phonocentric speech from its privileged place in Western metaphysics (12-13). Following this argument, it is not always clear which side of the deconstructive turnpike Agamben is actually on, but he appears to follow Heidegger, rather than Derrida, in preserving the privileging of ‘B/being’ in Western metaphysics, instead of endorsing the deconstruction of Western metaphysics performed by Derrida’s Of Grammatology.
In “On the Sayable and the Idea,” Agamben also attempts to salvage Western metaphysics by resuscitating the quintessentially metaphysical (Platonic) notion that there is a transparent connection between signifiers (words), signifieds (ideas), and things (referents), which is immanent in the speech-act itself, and which makes things ‘sayable.’ Against “the whole modern theory of signification,” which he calls “a completely arbitrary apparatus,” Agamben emphasizes “the inaugural act of naming,” which “expresses the pure fact [sic] that being is said” in Western metaphysical language. Although he argues that “the Platonic model … is not exhausted by a word-concept-thing nexus,” Agamben’s argument still relies upon the Platonic theory of a mystical connection (Plato’s methexis) between the word or name (the signifier), the thing (the referent), and the metaphysical idea (the signified), which connects “the rose and the concept ‘the rose’” with “the idea of the rose, the rose in its pure sayability” (60-61). (But, after all, as Gertrude Stein famously observed: “a rose is a rose is a rose,” is it not?) And Agamben’s Platonic theory of signification is restricted to words or names (nouns), and ignores the syntactic function performed by those parts of speech (prepositions, articles, etc.) that do not designate either ideas or things, but only the differential structure of signification itself.
In What is Philosophy? Agamben is thus proposing a quintessentially metaphysical solution to a philosophical problem actually created by Western metaphysics itself. But whether the sceptical reader accepts the ‘modern theory of signification,’ upon which both right/left turns of Continental philosophy are based, or, instead, follows Agamben in reviving the Platonic theory, the reader still must admire the breathtaking virtuosity with which Agamben reprises the whole course of Western metaphysics in the brief essays of What is Philosophy?
